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When the "Honeymoon" is over

Second opinions on popular games

After playing some of the years amazing AAA releases for hours and hours on end, I can't help but feeling let down. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my tastes are too old school. Some of them I've lost complete interest halfway through and I can't even find the motivation to finish.

It's just like the "Honeymoon" period. When you first meet someone new and feel completely enthralled. You never fight, you're both so smitten that friends and family want to puke around your constant and disgusting pda. To quote Mallrats: "You guys are retarded for eachother". Than something happens. The freshness wears off. You no longer get that feeling when you look at eachother. The passion is gone.

In a way that describes how I feel about a lot of big name games. I get so caught up in the freshness of a game that I look right past glaring flaws and boring gameplay. One day I turn it on and than turn it right off. I've lost all interest to play or bother finishing and it goes into the pile of shame, forever alone.

I'll give one example, but I feel it could be applied to any game. SKYRIM. Game of the year. BEST GAME EVAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR. Right? The new graphics are amazing. My nord looks like Leonidas from 300. A duel sword fighting berserker in heavy enchanted dragon bone armor. I was in love with this game, between the fighting, the character progression and the exploration, I was amazed. Hundreds of hours of content, shoot, I'll be playing this game for the next year.

Or not. You see, after a while I lost interest. I've finished all the guild quests. I've finished all the Deadric artifact quests. I have a whole main story to finish and hundreds upon thousands of side quests to finish.

But Why should I? At this point, character skills build up very very slowly. All the skills I want to lvl up are just about maxed out. I have the best weapons and armor I can get. Character progression has come to a screeching halt.

Now that I can't get any better rewards for questing, the flaws in Skyrim really start to stand out. I felt like the combat was extremely dated and boring. Just shoot or run up and slash, no thinking involved. I also don't want to do the hundreds of thousands of side quests because they all involve finding a cave/grotto/fort and doing the stabby pokey fighting dance of boredom over and over and over with no new upgrade to show for my trouble. Having thousands of side quests to do doesn't really matter if that shit is boring. Hundreds of hours of content doesn't matter if it's random uninteresting filler. I just can't do it.

I feel this way with a lot of AAA games lately, they carry a fresh coat of paint but the gameplay mechanics feature no improvements and become boring very fast. I find myself going back to finish Chrono trigger, Lunar Silver Star Story, Final Fantasy 6. Maybe I'm just oldschool, but I feel like while being linear, the gameplay, story and art style hold up well, even nowdays.

I can't knock all AAA games though, Arkham City was a blast to play and featured sidequests that weren't just the blatant filler garbage found in every open world game. All the side quests relate to famous Batman villains and tie into the overall story, giving a peice of lore for completion. Why can't Mass Effect do that? I don't want to do random f*cking fetch quests when I'm trying to save the universe, stop half assing bioware, I know you guys can write some amazing shit. Put the same inspiration in your side quests as you do the main story and blow my mind, you have the money, you have the team. That said, I'm still picking up ME 3 on release day.

I also finished Kingdoms of Amalur, which in my opinion, had amazing character progression and was a much better game than Skyrim overall. Fun characters, awesome character progression. By the end of the game my mage was dropping meteors and one shotting hordes of tuatha on hard difficulty.

Sorry for the wall of text, just wanted to get that off my chest. Time for some 3ds and some sleep. In exciting real life news, today is technically the due date of my second child. It's going to be a girl this time. Any second my wife will go into labor and I will drop off the face of the earth and video games for two whole months of newborn baby hell. I love babies, but the first couple months are rough.

Comments (19)

I feel the same way

I thought I would be playing Skyrim till the end of time but for some reason I just don't feel like playing anymore, Bethesda better have some kickass DLC. Also I'm currently playing Kingdoms of Amalur. For me it kind of worked in reverse, in comparison to Skyrim.( starts off blah, but as time goes on gets more addictive and fun)

I hear ya

I loved SKyrim, and still do, but I'm taking a bit of a break so as not to get tired of it. The combat in skyrim is really meh. I have not followed questlines, I just enjoy walking around and discovering stuff. So far, I still level up so the reward system is there. Once I get past the level up stage though, I can see how it could become a drag and cause me to lose interest.

Right now my honeymoon is a game I borrowed from a friend. Transformers war for cyberton. I'm glued to this and have spent a good part of my Saturday on it.

yeah....

as good as skyrim is, it IS missing something, I think it is the combat. If it had Dark Souls quality combat it would be an entirely different game. As it is now, the combat is very 2dimensional and repetitive. IT's sad.

I haven't beaten Arkham City yet but I really liked it. I've been going old school too.

My beef is that

Half the game is exploration and the other half is combat. I personally feel it would have been a much, much better game if the world was a little smaller and more time was spent developing the fighting system. Bethesda needs to find a balance between gameplay and gameworld. The sandbox stuff is cool, but if I'm not having fun with the basic mechanics, I won't want to explore anymore.

Paul

I feel that way about quite a few games. Aka I'm excited for them at first then either the gameplay gets boring, the sidequests become cumbersome, OR I find out there's now a "complete edition"with all the stuff I don't have.

Games back then seemed to have more lasting power. Funny you mentioned Lunar and FF 6 because those rank "Top 5" on my retro rpg list!

"AAA" games are mostly bland

Safe, shallow, no challenge, too much hand holding. Figuring things out in games was fun. Overcoming a challenge was fun. Being immersed in a convincing setting with ut directional arrows and all sorts of blingy shit popping up on screen was fun. Now you have games catering to people who "just want to experience the story." or just want to be awesome at games with no effort and no penalty. It's a reason it's called 'lowest' common denominator, hehe.

Elder Scrolls was always like that. I haven't finished a storyline yet in that series. Too much content spread too thinly. New Vegas was the last open world RPG that satisfied. Good writing, characters, quests with multiple solutions.

Yea...

I'm also bummed about the yearly releases. Assassins Creed has a lot of potential going for it if the dev's would take a break and really work on making an amazing game instead of an okay expansion pack.

Mass Effect doesn't do that

Because it's going for something different than AC. Part of AC's appeal is Batman, and Rocksteady realized this so they decided to squeeze as much fanservice as possible. Also, AC is in a much more contained area than ME. You're not going to Metropolis, you're staying in an area with every single Batman villain, of course everything's going to tie into the villains.

Mass Effect sidequests are trying to help flesh out the universe. Having everything tie in to the Reapers makes no sense because not everything in Mass Effect is supposed to be connected to the Reapers. If everything was, it would not be as believable of a sci-fy universe.

kingdoms of...

Loved the game for the first half... i found the same thing you did for most big games... the second half was boring. I didn't progress at all for the last part of the game. I reached my level cap and i couldn't get much better. I just went and beat the game without finishing sidequests because there was no point. I would not get any stronger or better weapons.

Arkham City

I've experienced this same "comedown" in Skyrim, and whenever it seems that I have a few spare minutes to play something, I find myself gravitating towards something else.

Arkham City was great though, and I myself managed to get through its story in its entirety as well. I agree that it was low on filller missions, but if was somewhat strange to have GCPD badgering me to come check out some new gadget/equipment they found when I was poisoned and on the clock to find the antidote. Yes, I realize that upgraded batarangs are lovely, but they do me know good if I am dead!

Also, congrats and good luck with the new little one. Try and squeeze some games in during nap time. :)

Bad games

Maybe I will play some bad games. I really want to enjoy them (AAA games). The presentation is amazing, but some of the gameplay mechanics don't get any better with fancy graphics. I just started my 5 or 6 th playthrough of Uncharted 2. I freaking love that game.

couldnt agree more

i feel it

if anything it's one of the various reasons why I've been holding off on these new game releases and been hinting down some of the old school titles that were able to deliver. even now I hunted down chrono trigger off the PSN store if only to revisit.

congrats on the future pending arrival. hope you make a girl gamer out of her!